Online Social Networks Misuse, Cyber Crimes, and Counter Mechanisms

2021 ◽  
pp. 183-203
Author(s):  
Sanjeev Rao ◽  
Anil Kumar Verma ◽  
Tarunpreet Bhatia
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Online Social Networks ◽  
Personal Information ◽  
Social Engineering ◽  
Cyber Attacks ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Cyber Espionage ◽  
Cyber Crimes ◽  
Indispensable Tool ◽  
Insight Into

Online social networks (OSNs) are nowadays an indispensable tool for communication on account of their rise, simplicity, and efficacy. Worldwide users use OSN as a tool for social interactions, news propagation, gaming, political propaganda, and advertisement in building brand awareness, etc. At the same time, many OSN users unintentionally expose their personal information that is used by the malicious users and third-party apps to perform various kind for cyber-crimes like social engineering attacks, cyber espionage, extortion-malware, drug-trafficking, misinformation, cyberbullying, hijacking clicks, identity theft, phishing, mistrusts, fake profiles, and spreading malicious content. This chapter presents an overview of various cyber-crimes associated with OSN environment to gain insight into ongoing cyber-attacks. Also, counter mechanisms in the form of tools, techniques, and frameworks are suggested.

Evolving Cyber Threats, Combating Techniques, and Open Issues in Online Social Networks

2021 ◽  
pp. 219-235
Author(s):  
Sanjeev Rao ◽  
Anil Kumar Verma ◽  
Tarunpreet Bhatia
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Online Social Networks ◽  
Personal Information ◽  
Machine Learning Algorithms ◽  
Privacy And Security ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Professional Groups ◽  
Cyber Threats ◽  
Common Interests ◽  
Cyber Crimes

Online social networks (OSNs) are renowned powerful web tools that allow worldwide users to connect with their friends, families, professional groups, and social circle through social interaction for sharing common interests. With the proliferation, ease, and efficacy of OSNs, these are becoming an essential tool for communication. But many OSN users innocently uncover their personal information such as their home address, phone numbers, email id, etc. that can be used by the malicious user to perform various kind for cyber-crimes like cyber-bullying, spamming, click-jacking, identity theft, phishing, distrust, fake profiles, spreading malicious content, etc. This chapter presents a review of various privacy and security threats/attacks associated with OSN users and recommended combating techniques based on data-mining and machine learning algorithms. Also, the future directions for upcoming researchers in this field are suggested.

scholarly journals CanaryTrap: Detecting Data Misuse by Third-Party Apps on Online Social Networks

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (4) ◽  
pp. 336-354
Author(s):  
Shehroze Farooqi ◽  
Maaz Musa ◽  
Zubair Shafiq ◽  
Fareed Zaffar
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Online Social Networks ◽  
Personal Information ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Targeted Advertising ◽  
High Profile ◽  
The Third ◽  
Email Address ◽  
The Third Party

AbstractOnline social networks support a vibrant ecosystem of third-party apps that get access to personal information of a large number of users. Despite several recent high-profile incidents, methods to systematically detect data misuse by third-party apps on online social networks are lacking. We propose CanaryTrap to detect misuse of data shared with third-party apps. CanaryTrap associates a honeytoken to a user account and then monitors its unrecognized use via different channels after sharing it with the third-party app. We design and implement CanaryTrap to investigate misuse of data shared with third-party apps on Facebook. Specifically, we share the email address associated with a Facebook account as a honeytoken by installing a third-party app. We then monitor the received emails and use Facebook’s ad transparency tool to detect any unrecognized use of the shared honeytoken. Our deployment of CanaryTrap to monitor 1,024 Facebook apps has uncovered multiple cases of misuse of data shared with third-party apps on Facebook including ransomware, spam, and targeted advertising.

Online Social Networks: Why We Disclose

2010 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanna Krasnova ◽  
Sarah Spiekermann ◽  
Ksenia Koroleva ◽  
Thomas Hildebrand
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Online Social Networks ◽  
Information Disclosure ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Personal Information ◽  
Equation Model ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
Network Provider ◽  
Privacy Calculus ◽  
Privacy Risks

On online social networks such as Facebook, massive self-disclosure by users has attracted the attention of Industry players and policymakers worldwide. Despite the Impressive scope of this phenomenon, very little Is understood about what motivates users to disclose personal Information. Integrating focus group results Into a theoretical privacy calculus framework, we develop and empirically test a Structural Equation Model of self-disclosure with 259 subjects. We find that users are primarily motivated to disclose Information because of the convenience of maintaining and developing relationships and platform enjoyment. Countervailing these benefits, privacy risks represent a critical barrier to information disclosure. However, users’ perception of risk can be mitigated by their trust in the network provider and availability of control options. Based on these findings, we offer recommendations for network providers.

Freedom of Expression and the Right to Privacy and Ethics in Dialectic of Human Rights in This Complex and Turbulent Society

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
José Poças Rascão ◽  
Nuno Gonçalo Poças
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Online Social Networks ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Technological Development ◽  
Social Engineering ◽  
Digital Data ◽  
Right To Privacy ◽  
The Right To Privacy ◽  
The Right

The article is about human rights freedom of expression, the right to privacy, and ethics. Technological development (internet and social networks) emphasizes the issue of dialectics and poses many challenges. It makes the theoretical review, the history of human rights through and reference documents, an analysis of the concepts of freedom, privacy, and ethics. The internet and social networks pose many problems: digital data, people's tracks, the surveillance of citizens, the social engineering of power, online social networks, e-commerce, spaces of trust, and conflict.

Privacy and Security for Virtual Communities and Social Networks

2013 ◽  
pp. 19-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georgios Michaelides ◽  
Gábor Hosszú
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Online Social Networks ◽  
Virtual Communities ◽  
Personal Information ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Virtual Community ◽  
Privacy And Security ◽  
Internet Privacy ◽  
Large Audience ◽  
Privacy Risks

The importance of the virtual communities’ privacy and security problems comes into prominence by the rapid development of online social networks. This article presents the multiple threats currently plaguing the virtual world, Internet privacy risks, and recommendations and countermeasures to avoid such problems. New generations of users feel comfortable publishing their personal information and narrating their lives. They are often unaware how vulnerable the data in their public profiles are, which a large audience daily accesses. A so-called digital friendship is built among them. Such commercial and social pressures have led to a number of privacy and security risks for social network members. The article presents the most important vulnerabilities and suggests protection methods and solutions that can be utilized according to the threat. Lastly, the authors introduce the concept of a privacy-friendly virtual community site, named CWIW, where privacy methods have been implemented for better user protection.

Social Networking and Trust

2011 ◽  
pp. 32-41
Author(s):  
Vladlena Benson
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Networking ◽  
Online Social Networks ◽  
Social Networking Sites ◽  
Cyber Threats ◽  
Current State ◽  
Trust Formation ◽  
Threat Mitigation ◽  
Silver Bullet ◽  
Insight Into

Based on the literature review of the theory of trust, this chapter aims to provide an insight into trust formation on social networking sites (SNS). An overview of the current state of cybercrime and known ways of threat mitigation helps shed some light on the reasons why social networks became easy targets for Internet criminals. Increasingly, personalisation is seen as a method for counteracting attacks perpetrated via phishing messages. This chapter aims to look specifically at trust in online social networks and how it influences vulnerability of users towards cybercrime. The chapter poses a question whether personalisation is the silver bullet to combat cyber threats on social networks. Further research directions are discussed.

Ethical Hacking, Threats, and Vulnerabilities in Cybersecurity

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Nabie Y. Conteh
Keyword(s):  
Economic Impact ◽  
Goal Setting ◽  
Social Engineering ◽  
Cyber Attacks ◽  
Rapid Rise ◽  
Executive Summary ◽  
Penetration Testing ◽  
Cyber Crimes ◽  
Socio Economic Impact

This chapter will discuss the important topic of ethical hacking, also known as penetration testing. It will start by explaining the constituents of ethical hacking: scope and goal setting, exploitation, and documentation. The authors will define and explain the reasons for the rapid rise in cyber-crimes and their socio-economic impact. It will further discuss the steps involved in ethical hacking, who is allowed to conduct ethical hacking, its importance, and the role it plays in deterring future and potential hackers. The chapter will analyze the various types of malware and the steps to follow to become an ethical hacker. It will further describe social engineering, the types of cyber-attacks, the phases of attack, testing for vulnerabilities, and it will put forward a list of countermeasures. The chapter will end by detailing the steps to be taken in the documentation process and crafting the executive summary.

Social Engineering Techniques and Password Security

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 58-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Dawn Medlin
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Care Workers ◽  
Personal Information ◽  
Social Engineering ◽  
Third Party ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Time Data ◽  
Password Security ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Actual Health

Due to the Internet and applications that can access the Internet, healthcare employees can benefit from the ability to view patient data almost anywhere and at any time. Data and information is also being shared among third party vendors, partners and supplies. With this type of accessibility of information which generally does include very personal information such as diagnosis and social security numbers, data can easily be obtained either through social engineering techniques or weak password usage. In this paper, a presentation of social engineering techniques is explored as well as the password practices of actual health care workers.

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